quote: I guess it all comes back to trust anyway despite the fact that the network was designed so that trust wouldn't be necessary.

You got it.

One write up on bitcoin I saw a couple of days ago specifically said BC was founded based on mistrust....mistrust of governments, central banks, laws, etc.

Yet mistrusting bitcoin itself is becoming more evident every time one of the BC exchanges gets hacked and people lose money.

I guess you saw that "Instawallet" which is a BC "bank" for lack of a better term, was hacked yesterday and the thief made off with an estimated $4.3 million of its customers money. Instawallet has frozen all of its customers accounts for 90 days while it sorts through whose bitcoins got stolen and how, or if, it can replace their money.

quote:Wiki, any idea when the transaction verification time will be reduced to near real-time? I'm sure this is in the works...?

As far as I know, there are no plans to change the time required for confirmation. I don't even think that could be done without a hard fork.

That being said, however, there are things in the works and ideas in the ether to "fix" this issue.

One is the use of green addresses, which are essentially special trusted addresses that the recipient trusts will not attempt a double spend, therefore, instant transactions are possible.

Another idea is basically third parties that manage transactions off of the bitcoin blockchain, and then settle up later. For instance, perhaps a company could come about that processes POS transactions for retail customers. They would ensure that all transactions are instant and legit, and then settle up later.

re: Bitcoin improvement threadPosted by Broke on 4/4/13 at 10:03 am to LSURussian

quote:What will that do to your frequent claim of "free or very low cost of transactions"?

I imagine it goes to shite quickly. Unless of course, these people are willing to work for free.

Now correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't one of Wiki's selling points that you could store them easily in wallets? Now he's saying that you shouldn't? And I'm still very unclear on his stance with inflationary vs deflationary. I almost remember him flip flopping that but I could be totally wrong here.

quote:BC is being used as a temporary store of value or as a speculative investment

Pretty much what the article I posted a couple of days ago argued.

quote:which is the universal definition of money. So as a "virtual currency" it is a failure already

To get technical, money can be an exchange vehicle, a store of value, must be easy to transact and be finely divisible.

Bitcoin does all these things although as the aforementioned article points out the "store of value" component is getting very inflated these days. To be fair, the USD in its very early days (1790-ish) fluctuated pretty violently as well.

I am not willing to say BC are the future but it clearly is getting some traction. I suspect without proof that the current price is waaaay overblown given the market size and that it will crash again. But the niche it fills isn't going away so the demand won't either.

quote:I have tried repeatedly to find how much BC's have been used to actually purchase goods or services and I just can't find it anywhere.

You can buy USD for it on some websites. Or you can buy illegal drugs online on Silk Road.